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In the Age of Social Networking – Why Email Marketing Still Works for Online Business

Many people wonder if they still need email marketing now that we have interactive social media. But, there are many reasons that point to why you should still be email marketing, and in fact email marketing is still more effective and preferable if you have to choose one over the other.

1. It’s a Numbers Game – More people have email accounts than they do social media accounts, and more people still purchase through email than they do through social media messages. Plus, the truth is that social networks are still limiting your ability to get to your audience even when they have consented to receive your messages by liking your pages.

2. Email Is More Personal – People often check their email messages on their cell phones, mobile devices and computers and love to see something specifically addressed to them. Email gives you the personalization options that social media never can. When you send a social media message it is going out to all audience members with no personalization (unlike email), which makes them feel rather generic.

3. It’s More Businesslike – With social media you have to contend with cat videos and baby laughing videos, but with email messages your audience has signed up to receive your business transactional emails and are expecting to get promotions. That makes email much more businesslike than social media, even LinkedIn, can dream of being.

4. Email Gets More Attention – People are much more likely to open and engage with a personalized email message than they are to engage with your social media marketing campaigns. That’s why social media marketing should be engaged to build your email list rather than promote products directly.

5. People Expect Your Email – Everyone has signed up to receive your email. They’ve given their permission for you to send them marketing messages and are expecting to receive them. In fact, if you don’t send them often enough, they will get frustrated that you’re not sending them enough messages and forget about you.

6. They Agree to Receive Your Email – Your audience has agreed to receive your email messages, which is a big thing. When someone “likes” your social media page they actually aren’t expecting promotions to appear on their wall, but when they sign up to get your email messages they are expecting to get promotions, sales, and information about your products and services.

7. They Will Receive Your Email – If you join a reputable email autoresponder service, your email messages have over a 99 percent chance of getting into your customer’s inbox, whereas reports are showing that less than 10 percent of your social media followers or “likes” are seeing your messages.

8. Email Is Easier to Track – Email autoresponder software has better analytics than social media at this time in history. You’ll be able to measure your metrics better so that you’ll know whether your goals are being met or not.

In terms of online marketing, it’s clear that if content is king; email marketing is queen. No serious business person should give up on email marketing in favor of social media marketing. Right now social media marketing is too limited, not personal enough, and reaching your audience is still not a sure thing like it is with email marketing.